McCain: Obama Would Be ‘Wise’ to Replace Biden with Hillary

Updated at 4:31 pm, August 15th, 2012

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ABC News(NEW YORK) — Although he predicted it would not happen, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday it would be “wise” for President Obama to take Vice President Joe Biden off the Democratic presidential ticket and replace him with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I think it might be wise to do that but it’s not going to happen obviously, for a whole variety of reasons,” McCain said in an interview Wednesday afternoon on Fox News, stopping just short of Sarah Palin’s call last night for an all-out replacement of Biden on the ticket.

“I’m not sure if I were Hillary Clinton I would want to be on that team,” the senator added, “I think her ambitions frankly are for 2016 and I’m not sure that would enhance that likelihood.”

McCain had some harsh words ready for Biden, saying that the vice president “continues to say things that are unacceptable in American politics,” and specifically referenced Biden’s remarks Tuesday in Danville, Va.

Tuesday Vice President Biden said to the crowd, “look at their budget, and what they are proposing. Romney wants to let — He said in the first hundred days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

McCain said the vice president “crossed the line” this time and should be held accountable for that sort of remark.

“Yet he seems to get away with it because it’s just sort of a joke,” McCain said.

The harsh words weren’t reserved just for Vice President Biden but for the Obama administration’s handling of the campaign overall, the tenor of which McCain says calls into question the Obama team’s ability to govern should President Obama win a second term.

“What do you get if you win with this kind of campaign?” he questioned of the Obama campaign, pointing to specific negative and what he defined as misleading ads the Obama campaign has run. “If you run this kind of slash and burn gutter campaign that they are running, what happens when you start governing again?”

McCain said it would be “very difficult for anybody in the team that ran this kind of campaign to govern and bring people together come the following January.”